washington d.c.

The NAACP’s Rachel Dolezal may be meme-orialized for copying Tina Turner’s hairstyles, but she’s drawn inspiration from J.M.W. Turner as well. Her oil painting The Shape of Our Kind is remarkably similar to Turner’s [groan] The Slave Ship. I’m sure there’s a joke to be made about old white dudes dominating even this singularly bizarre, unfolding chapter of art history. [@jolieishere]

Dolezal, who has an MFA from Howard University, actually works in a broad variety of media. Apparently those oil painting skills really do translate to being a better makeup artist. [Dolezal’s Portfolio]

Europe has gained two new Rem-Koolhaas-designed contemporary art spaces. Both are funded by wealthy private backers and both are adaptive reuse projects. [The Guardian]

How many windows does the the Hirschhorn Museum have? Is it correct to call the museum near windowless? Does it have four windows only or 331? Will somebody please call a fact checker in here to get this answer right. According to the Washington City Paper debate raged on this subject after New York TImes staffer Graham Bowle paraphrased Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chui in describing the museum as near windowless. But there’s a question of interior windows, of which there are many, (do they count if they are not exterior?) and whether a circle 96 panes should be considered a single window. I dunno the answer to this question, but if I were the Times I’d feel silly running a correction that said this building isn’t near windowless. Relatedly when I googled “Johnson house, glass house, windows” I got no results. Seems like once windows get really big people stop calling them windows. [Washington City Paper]

Nek Chand, the self-taught artist who constructed Chandigarh’s Rock Garden, has died at age 90. [The New York Times]

How a forgotten Harry Bertoia sculpture funded University of Virginia’s School of Architecture doctoral program. [The Washington Post]

A Milwaukee artist who lives under the flightpath for that city’s airport painted “Welcome to Cleveland” on his roof. [GQ]

Artists are not always a cheery bunch. Yinka Shonibare’s card for the Guardian’s artist-Christmas card commission reads: “As we’re opening our Christmas presents and eating our Christmas dinner, spare a thought for the less fortunate people. As the popular song goes: Thank God it’s them instead of you. Do they know it’s Christmas time?” (Above, Elmgreen and Dragset’s Christmas contribution.) [The Guardian]

Washington, D.C. entrepreneur and lifelong art collector Dani Levinas is garnering support for his plan to transform a former schoolhouse into the city’s first “kunsthalle.” [Washington Post]

Jailed Pussy Riot members might be released as early as Thursday. [The Guardian]

I’ve been wanting to play Back to Bed, a Surrealist-inspired video game, for some time, but the release date has been pushed back until after Christmas. When I say “Surrealist,” I mean it: This puzzle-solving world is rife with Magritte-like apples and de Chirico-like corridors. [Polygon]

The New York Court of Appeals reversed a decision that would have made public the names of buyers at auction. As has been standard, buyers can remain anonymous. [The New York Times]

Soon, the world will see a 13th Gagosian: The Westminster City Council approved plans to create a “double height commercial art gallery.” The interior space will be huge, topping over 6, 500 square feet, with interiors outfitted by the team responsible for refurbishing the Tate Britain’s interiors. It surely seems like the Gagosian industry will be sticking around for some time; the dealer signed a 20-year-lease on the property. [Grosvenor]

Ending months of speculation, Washington D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art will not put up a “For Sale” sign. On Monday, the Museum announced it would remain in its historic 19th century home. That sends a nail through the coffin of a number of dramatic possibilities—moving to the Virginia suburbs had been tabled—raised in the name of salvaging the museum’s museum’s foundering finances. Nobody liked the idea. The Attorney General didn’t like it, preservationists didn’t like it, and the Corcoran College of Art and Design didn’t either.

Who’s on Team Corcoran? For now, it’s just a team of one, themselves. It seems like everyone living in Washington D.C. wants to save the Corcoran Gallery of Art from being sold, except, of course, the Corcoran. The past month has seen some added drama to the situation: the museum hired an international real estate agent, and in response, an area non-profit has filed paperwork on the museum’s behalf that would prevent any future construction inside the museum. That’s a whole lot of architecture-preservation-legal-stuff to digest, but the biggest thing to know is that right now, the city has been bustling with activity by civilian groups opposed to the museum’s potential move.